Cameron Joseph

Cameron Joseph is Talking Points Memo's senior political correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He covers Capitol Hill, the White House and the permanent campaign. Previous publications include the New York Daily News, Mashable, The Hill and National Journal. He grew up near Chicago and is an irrationally passionate Cubs fan.

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Cameron

Less than 12 hours after patting himself on the back for avoiding the use of Sen. Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) name as he attacked the senator during a big rally in Arizona, President Trump took to twitter to make his complaints about Flake even more explicit.

Phoenix crowd last night was amazing – a packed house. I love the Great State of Arizona. Not a fan of Jeff Flake, weak on crime & border!

That tweet comes after Trump congratulated himself for being “very presidential” for only alluding to his hostility towards Flake and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during a Tuesday night rally in Phoenix.

“I will not mention any names. Very presidential,” he said after attacking McCain for casting the vote that stymied Senate Republicans’ Obamacare repeal push. “And nobody wants me to mention your other senator, who’s weak on border, weak on crime. Nobody knows who the hell he is! See, I haven’t mentioned any names, so now everybody’s happy.”

Trump has signaled for weeks that he’s likely to endorse a primary challenger to Flake, a move that would be unprecedented in modern history — it’s unheard of for a president to endorse a primary opponent of a sitting senator of his own party.

That hostility towards Flake, who already faces a tough path to reelection next year, is contributing to his building tension with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who he has been increasingly publicly feuding with in recent weeks even though he needs McConnell to pass anything in his legislative agenda.

A super-PAC closely aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is firing a warning shot at President Trump ahead of his Tuesday trip to Arizona.

The Senate Leadership Fund is out with a new digital ad slamming a candidate the president has touted against Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), former Arizona state Sen. Kelli Ward (R), for being “crazy” — and borrows a favorite Trump phrase to point out she lost “big league” to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) last year.

“Chemtrail Kelli’s got her head in the clouds with crazy ideas,” the digital ad says after highlighting her hosting a taxpayer-funded town hall to look into conspiracy theories about chemtrails. “Now after losing big-league to John McCain, Chemtrail Kelli says he should resign so she can be senator.”

The ad is set to run for the next three days, bracketing a trip Trump is making to the state where he’s likely to take potshots at Flake.

As TPM wrote this morning, Trump has increasingly been fired up about taking out the sitting senator due to his criticism of the president, tweeting attacks against Flake and touting Ward’s candidacy. Senate Republicans have rallied around Flake, looking to defend him as they worry a divisive and nasty primary could hurt their chances at holding the seat.

The race sets up an almost unheard-of public grudge match between a president and Senate leaders from his own party, as Trump looks to take out one of the Republicans who’s been most critical of him.

Ward may not be the only candidate who runs against Flake, however, as a pair of more serious GOP contenders with close trump ties — Arizona state Treasurer Jeff DeWit and former state party chairman Robert Graham — are also eying bids, with the quiet encouragement of some White House staff.

The ad buy is relatively small — $10,000 for three days of digital spots — but is likely only the opening salvo in what promises to be an expensive and brutal primary.

President Trump is heading to Arizona for a Tuesday campaign rally where he’s expected to take aim at primary-plagued Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

The event marks the unofficial kickoff of a primary election cycle that risks going sideways on a party that had finally felt like it had figured out how to contain its congressional primary problems.

For two elections in a row, the Senate GOP establishment managed to steamroll the type of fatally flawed gaffe-prone candidates that cost the party the majority in 2010 and 2012, spending heavily on their preferred candidates to whack-a-mole underfunded and flawed challengers in places like Mississippi, North Carolina and Kansas.

But in the 2018 cycle party strategists face a chaotic map exacerbated by a petulant president who seems more interested in settling scores with his own party’s critics than defeating vulnerable Democrats.

“I can’t think of a quicker way to harm Senate Republicans than to target a sitting incumbent instead of targeting the 10 Democrats who are up for reelection in states he’s won. It’s really a remarkable and harmful situation,” said GOP strategist Brian Walsh.

Republican incumbents face Trump-fueled insurgencies in Arizona and Nevada, where Republican Sen. Dean Heller is caught between a GOP base that’s been unhappy he hasn’t been more willing to embrace Trump and a general electorate in a Hispanic-heavy state that Hillary Clinton carried. He infuriated both by waffling over Obamacare repeal.

And the downside of having 10 Democratic incumbents up for reelection in states Trump carried are a bevy of potentially messy primaries for the right to face them.

GOP primaries have already gotten ugly in Indiana and West Virginia, with candidates lobbing bombs at each other that could wound whoever wins the primary, while GOP strategists have wary eyes on developing primary races in Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio.

In deep red Alabama, some Republicans quietly worry that hardline religious conservative Roy Moore (R), the first-place finisher in the GOP’s primary, could give Democrats a tiny glimmer of hope for a win if he defeats appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) in next month’s primary runoff.

Even if their best candidates all win, primaries are already forcing GOP candidates to bear-hug Trump when it would serve them better for the general election to get some distance from the president — while blowing through badly needed campaign funds.

“It’s kind of a new purity test. It’s no longer about who’s the guy who says no to every spending bill, it’s who’s the guy who stands by Trump and who’s the guy who was too much of a pussy to stand by our hero president,” said one GOP strategist involved in a contested Senate primary. “It’s problematic.”

Some Republicans are also frustrated that Trump is using his bully pulpit to push around his own party rather than take on red-state Democrats and boost their preferred candidates where he remains popular. While he endorsed Strange, his support has been rather tepid, to say the least:

Congratulation to Roy Moore and Luther Strange for being the final two and heading into a September runoff in Alabama. Exciting race!

Nowhere is the Trump-fueled party fission more troublesome than Arizona.

Flake is facing a primary challenge from former state Sen. Kelli Ward (R), a candidate most mainline Republicans believe would hand Democrats a winnable race.

“That’s the deep concern with someone like Kelli Ward. She’s in the same camp as Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock,” said Walsh, who was a top staffer at the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2010 and 2012 when gaffe-prone candidates won primaries in Delaware, Missouri and Indiana as well as Nevada before costing the party those seats.

Flake has gone out of his way to directly antagonize the president, penning an op-ed and a book blasting the president and warning that the GOP “lost our way and began to rationalize away our principles” in supporting him.

Billionaire Robert Mercer, one of Trump’s top donors, recently cut a $300,000 check for Ward (he gave her twice that much last cycle).

Republicans believe that Flake starts the race with the upper hand in the primary. Ward is viewed as a fringe figure by many Republicans, and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) already defeated her by a 13-point margin in a 2016 primary by branding her “Chemtrail Kelli.”

But Flake isn’t as well-known as McCain, and he’s done a lot more to rile up Trump’s backers. His views on immigration and trade are at odds with many in the party base. And Ward isn’t Flake’s only threat: Arizona state Treasurer Jeff DeWit (R) and former state GOP chairman Robert Graham, both Trump allies, are eying campaigns as well, with the quiet encouragement of some White House staff.

It’s unclear whether a DeWit or Graham candidacy would help Flake by splitting the anti-Flake vote with Ward or hurt him because both are viewed as much more formidable candidates.

While the Flake-Trump feud threatens to rage for months through next August’s late primary, Democrats are excited that Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), a highly touted candidate, is expected to run and have another solid possible option with Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton (D).

There have been rumors Trump would use the Phoenix stop Tuesday to endorse one of Flake’s primary foes, though sources close to the White House say it’s a lot more likely that he is heading there to announce a presidential pardon of controversial former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Still, he’s widely expected to take shots at both Flake and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who helped sink the GOP’s Obamacare repeal efforts.

Members of Senate GOP leadership are not-so-subtly making a show of support for Flake ahead of Trump’s trip:

Arizonans are well-served by the principled leadership of @JeffFlake. He always fights for what's best for #AZ & we need him in the #Senate.

Flake’s campaign voiced a hope, likely optimistic, that the president won’t pick a fight during his visit.

“Senator Flake is focused on fighting for our state, and he hopes the president will speak constructively about moving forward with tax reform, border security, and other important issues facing our country,” said Flake campaign spokesman William Allison.

But Flake’s close allies admit he’s no shoo-in for reelection. And they joined other Republicans in wishing Trump would spend more time targeting Democrats and less time going after his own party.

“There’s no question Flake was going to have a very tough fight anyhow and having Trump on the other side is going to make it very difficult,” former Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), a Flake backer and Trump critic, told TPM. “It’s not helpful for the party to have this kind of internecine warfare going on.”

This post initially misstated the year in which McCain defeated Ward in a primary.

It may take a crimson tide to keep former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore from coming to Washington.

The groups backing appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R) successfully carpet-bombed Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) into third place in the primary with millions of dollars of ads highlighting the congressman’s previous criticism of President Trump. But they face a much more daunting challenge in figuring out how to handle Moore, a well-known figure who’s beloved on the hard right for his virulently social conservative views and who is unlikely to see his base abandon him.

Moore took first place in Tuesday’s GOP primary for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old Senate with 39 percent of the vote, with Strange getting the second runoff spot with 33 percent after receiving huge financial support from groups aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

And while Moore has plenty of detractors in-state who see him as a fringe rabble-rouser, even Strange’s allies admit the race is an uphill battle — one where heavy attacks from Washington-based outside groups risk backfiring on their candidate in a state where voters detest being told what to do.

“Luther’s liabilities are how he got there and that the McConnell Washington crowd have been so heavy-handed in supporting him,” said one Alabama Republican strategist who supports Strange in the race.

“We’re a state full of folks who like to fight, who are defiant, we don’t like following rules, and that’s why Roy Moore is popular,” said David Azbell, a longtime Alabama GOP strategist. “A lot of folks think he can shoot off a lot of fireworks in D.C. while not doing a lot of harm.”

Alabama voters are also furious over a series of scandals that have rocked statehouse, and that taint got all over Strange with his appointment to the Senate. Strange had been the state attorney general in charge of the investigation into disgraced Gov. Robert Bentley (R) — until Bentley appointed him to fill Sessions’ seat shortly before Bentley was forced to resign over a sex scandal.

Some saw Bentley’s support as a quid-pro-quo to get Strange out of his business. That’s a problem when paired with the association with McConnell, who has become a bogeyman on the right.

“Any time you’re the incumbent and 70 percent of people voted against you it’s hard to bounce back,” said Alabama GOP strategist Chris Brown, who ran the campaign of the fourth-place finisher, state Sen. Trip Pittman (R), and is neutral in the runoff.

Azbell, who backed Pittman in the primary, dislikes Moore enough that he’s never voted for him, skipping his line on the ballot both times Moore was the GOP nominee and working against him in past primaries. But he’s ready to break with precedent.

“I really don’t want Mitch McConnell and Robert Bentley telling me who my senator is going to be,” he said.

It’s not the first time that’s worked for him: Moore won back his judicial seat by running against, and handily defeating, another Bentley appointee in 2012.

Strange’s allies argue that Moore will struggle to grow his appeal outside of his intense core of loyal followers. But the combination of an off-year primary, voters’ intense dislike of the traditional GOP establishment both in-state and in D.C. create the perfect climate for a Moore insurgency.

“Roy Moore has the intensity,” said GOP strategist Jon Coley, a Strange supporter. “Roy will turn his people out. Luther’s got to turn his people out and find a bunch more.”

The big question is how to do that.

The appointed senator will need to boost his support in a big way in the state’s more urban business communities — especially in and around Huntsville, Brooks’ base — and his allies worry that a deeply negative race may just turn off voters and convince them to stay home, leaving Moore with his rabid but limited base of support with the upper hand.

The strategy from the pro-McConnell Senate Leadership Fund of playing for a Strange runoff with Moore by destroying Brooks paid off. And while they’re off TV right now, they offered a glimpse of how they plan to attack Moore going forward, with ads attacking him for taking a $1 million salary from the Christian organization he runs and for flying on private airplanes with the organization’s money. A Washington Republican strategist said the group is now finalizing their strategy for the runoff.

Moore has deep support on the hard right for his repeated stands athwart the tide of social change — in a state whose official motto is “We dare defend our rights.”

Moore has twice been forced from the state Supreme Court bench for disobeying court orders, first for installing, then refusing to remove, a monument to the Ten Commandments outside his courthouse, then just a few years ago for ordering his state to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

And Strange faces another challenge, with one of his best surrogates sidelined and another being notoriously unpredictable.

Sessions is a close ally — Strange helped on his campaigns and followed him as state attorney general. But Sessions doesn’t plan to have any involvement in the race because of the ethical constraints of his current job.

And while President Trump’s endorsement was a huge boost for Strange in the first round, it’s unclear what he’ll do going forward.

Trump’s tweets and a late robocall backing Strange likely helped boost him to second place and kept alive his hopes of staying in Washington. But Trump hasn’t been unequivocal in his support. The president’s reaction to the runoff result was a pair of tweets congratulating both candidates — and himself.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/897764432369070080

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/897833223501344769

“What Trump does from here will be interesting to see. Luther must be holding his breath that Trump doesn’t have another post-Charlottesville and start flip-flopping on this. I’m holding my breath if I’m in his camp that this thing sticks for six weeks,” said the Alabama strategist supporting Strange.

It’s unclear how the next six weeks will shape up. But one thing’s for sure, according to Coley: “It’s going to be nasty.”

Anti-gay former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore will face Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) in a GOP primary runoff for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old Senate seat in Alabama, setting up what’s likely to be a bloody contest.

Moore led the field with 41 percent of the GOP primary vote with more than 60 percent of precincts counted, with Strange at 32 percent and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) at 20 percent. The Associated Press has called the race.

Strange has received some huge outside help. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) allies spent millions to boost him and attack Brooks with ads highlighting Brooks’ earlier criticism of President Trump. The president’s own late endorsement of Strange may have played a key role in securing him a slot in the next round of voting.

Moore is a nationally known figure who has been railing against gays and Muslims for decades and has twice lost his job for refusing to follow higher court orders over religious issues.

In 2003, he was removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court after installing, then refusing to remove, a two-and-a-half-ton monument to the Ten Commandments outside his courthouse.

He won back his state Supreme Court seat in 2012 over a recently appointed judge after a pair of disappointing runs for governor, only to be suspended from the court once again after ordering state judges to disobey the U.S. Supreme Court and refuse to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Moore has doubled down on that rhetoric in this campaign: Earlier on Tuesday he declared that “There are communities under Sharia law right now in our country. Up in Illinois.”

Strange is the favorite of the GOP establishment and Alabama’s business community — whose support may hurt more than help in this race.

The senator was appointed to the seat by disgraced Gov. Robert Bentley (R) shortly before he was forced to resign from office. Strange, as state attorney general, had been in charge of the investigation into Bentley’s sex scandal before his appointment. His support from McConnell is also a double-edged sword, as the Kentucky Republican is far from popular with the base.

But Trump remains beloved by many Alabama Republicans, and could be a huge asset in the race — if he starts doing more than tweeting his support of Strange. The president cut a last-minute robocall to back his preferred candidate, and if he does more — like TV ads or an in-state visit — he could potentially help Strange overcome his disadvantage and catch Moore.

On the Democratic side, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones cruised to the nomination. Jones was the only real candidate in the race, with endorsements from former Vice President Joe Biden, local leaders and civil rights icon and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). But a previously unknown guy named Robert Kennedy, Jr. (not the one you’re thinking of) had jumped into the race as well. Early polls actually showed him ahead in the race, but they proved wildly off the mark, as Jones had almost two-thirds of the Democratic vote with one third of precincts counted.

Democrats are hopeful that they have an outside shot at the seat in ruby red Alabama if Moore wins the nomination.

Polls have officially closed in the primary for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old Senate seat in Alabama.

Appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) is fighting to stay in the GOP race against former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), ahead of what polls and strategists say is a likely primary runoff.

If no candidate wins an outright majority — as is likely — the top two vote-getters will square off in a late September runoff.

The controversial Brooks has a rabid following of hardline evangelical conservatives and is expected to finish at the top of the field. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) allies have spent millions to destroy Brooks in order to push Strange into second place, and public and private polls suggest they’ve succeeded, and while there’s no guarantee he’ll edge Brooks a late endorsement from President Trump has boosted him in a major way.

Brooks, in the meantime, spent his last day of the primary claiming that “There are communities under Sharia law right now in our country.”

First results are expected around 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Stay tuned, and click here for more background on the race and Moore’s controversial views.

In a few hours, we’ll see whether President Trump has knocked former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore off his high horse.

Moore, an inflammatory religious conservative who has twice been kicked off his state’s highest court for refusing to honor court orders regarding the separation of church and state, is the front-runner in a crowded GOP primary field to win Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old Senate seat from Alabama.

But Trump’s late endorsement of appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) — as well as millions in ad spending from super PACs aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — have sought to boost Strange to second place ahead of Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), a firebrand from the economic conservative rather than social conservative wing of the party, ahead of what’s expected to be a primary runoff.

Moore spent election day riding a horse to the polls — an election-day tradition for the traditionalist — before delivering one of his trademark religious right quips in an interview with Vox.

“There are communities under Sharia law right now in our country. Up in Illinois,” Moore declared before backtracking some when asked exactly where there were American communities living under Muslim law.

“Well, there’s Sharia law, as I understand it, in Illinois, Indiana — up there. I don’t know,” he continued.

Trump, in between tweeting attacks on the CEOs dropping out of his business council and taking impromptu questions where he defended the alt-right and blamed the left for the Neo Nazi-triggered violence in Charlottesville, VA last weekend, heaped praise on Strange in a Tuesday morning tweet. The president remains immensely popular with Alabama Republicans, and his last-minute boost could push Strange into a runoff and could help him stop Moore down the line.

No candidate is expected to win an outright majority to avoid a primary runoff, though Moore might have a slim outside shot of pulling off an outright win. McConnell’s allies have turned some of their fire on Moore in recent weeks after concentrating on tearing down Brooks, though they say that was designed to start softening him up for the next round of votes rather than because they were worried he might surge to a majority of the vote.

Democrats are quietly hopeful that if Moore wins the primary they might be able to put the race in play — but admit they have a big hurdle in their own primary.

The Democratic establishment has rallied around former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, who has endorsements from former Vice President Joe Biden and civil rights icon and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). But he’s facing a challenge from a random dude named Robert Kennedy, Jr. (no, not that one), who on name recognition alone is polling strong. If Jones can beat Kennedy he has an outside chance at defeating Moore, but that’s no sure thing. With other candidates in the race, Democrats may be looking at a primary runoff as well.

Polls close at 8 p.m. ET. If no candidate wins a majority, runoff elections will occur on Sept. 26.

Next year’s midterm elections could help answer a major question dividing Democrats: Should they focus more on winning back Obama-Trump voters, or lean hard into traditional Republican voters who went for Clinton last election?

The Trump era has injected new urgency in the years-old party fight about whether Democrats should focus on regaining the ground they’ve lost in older, whiter, less educated and more rural areas or push to boost their numbers in the diversifying, largely suburban areas that have been trending their way.

The bad news for Democrats: They need to improve significantly in both places to win back any real power in Washington. The good news: The next election will test both theories, with House and Senate strategists facing nearly opposite approaches.

‘Weird Accident Of History’

The competitive Senate map is tilted heavily towards more rural, less educated, poorer, whiter states this election cycle, where Democrats were a dying breed through the Obama era. On the flip side, many of House Democrats’ best targets are in traditionally Republican districts where well-educated white voters abandoned Trump in droves, and where fast-growing minority communities are quickly changing the landscape.

“We’re just in this weird accident of history,” said Democratic strategist John Hagner, who is working on both House and Senate races this cycle. “The party isn’t choosing to fight these type of seats, the map is giving them to us. We have no choice.”

The underlying ideological question that drives much of the current party split is whether Democrats should stress cultural or economic liberalism to get back to power — and how much to stomach moderates on those issues.

The Bernie Sanders wing of the party wants a much heavier emphasis on a populist economic agenda, and many downscale Democrats agree, with an emphasis on trade and other pocketbook issues and avoiding the hot-button social fault lines that have hurt them in those places for decades.

Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), all facing reelection, sound more like their party when they’re talking about Social Security and health care than the NRA or immigration.

But people in wealthier, better educated, more diverse and urban parts of the country are especially livid at Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, his hesitance to condemn white supremacists, his ditching the Paris climate accords, his threats to pull transgender soldiers out of the military, and the GOP’s attempts to defund Planned Parenthood — not to mention Russia.

Senate Democrats need to run up their numbers with the former group, while House Democrats plan to emphasize the latter, largely out of necessity.

Even with Trump’s plunging numbers, Democrats still need a lot of things to break the right way to overcome a maxed-out Senate map with few targets and a heavily gerrymandered House map.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has ranked 29 Republican-held House seats that Democrats have at least a decent chance of winning — either pure tossups or races that lean Republican.

In more than two-thirds of those seats (20 of 29), a higher percentage of people have a college degree than the national average of 30.6 percent, with many of the targeted districts well above that figure, according to Census data analyzed by TPM. Many are in the Sun Belt suburbs, like Reps. Darrel Issa (R-CA), Pete Sessions (R-TX) and the retiring Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL).

Republicans only hold 41 seats that are more diverse than the national average, a tiny fraction of their 240-seat majority. Ten of those are top Democratic targets, including 6 of the 17 GOP-held seats that are at least one-third Hispanic.

Eighteen of these 29 districts have fewer people 65 or older than the national average of 15.2 percent.

The most important driver of all: Clinton carried 18 of these 29 seats last fall, and Trump was held below 50 percent in all but three of them. Democrats need to net 24 seats next fall to take back the House.

“Out of necessity we are competing hard in the 23 districts that Hillary Clinton carried as well as districts where President Trump did well,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Tyler Law told TPM. “Clearly, there are many highly educated suburban areas that have become more diverse, more Democratic, and where voters are disillusioned with today’s Republican Party.”

The Senate, where Democrats are mostly playing defense, is a very different picture.

There are a dozen Senate seats in play at this point: A pair of GOP-held seats in Arizona and Nevada and 10 Democrat-held seats in states Trump won.

Those states are mostly less diverse, less educated and older than the nation as a whole.

In all 12 of those states, fewer people have a college degree than the national average.

Nine of the 12 are whiter than the national average — and in all nine of those at least 75 percent of the population is non-Hispanic white, compared to the national share of 61.3 percent. Nine of the twelve states also have more than the average number of senior citizens.

In 11 of the 12 states, Clinton underperformed Obama, and in five (Indiana, Missouri, Montana North Dakota and West Virginia) she won less than 40 percent of the vote.

On issues like trade and Social Security, Democrats often sound more like Trump than Clinton in those places.

“Taking a populist view of the issues and making sure you’re sticking up for Main Street, that works,” said one Senate Democratic strategist. “Trump joined the fight that Senate Democrats on many issues had been working on for a long time. The way he talks about trade and outsourcing is the cleanest cut example of that.”

‘All Of The Above’

Democratic strategists all argue they need to push hard to win both types of places — and that issues like Obamacare repeal help them across the country. Democrats are already up with ads hammering Republicans for trying to charge people more for insurance while giving tax cuts to the rich.

But they say party loyalists and major donors must embrace diversity of opinions, especially after heated intra-party fights about whether the Democratic establishment should back candidates who oppose abortion rights.

“Anyone who says we can focus only on Romney-Clinton seats or only on Obama-Trump seats hasn’t looked at the 2018 landscape. We have to push on both,” said Jesse Ferguson, an alum of the Clinton campaign and House race veteran. “An all-of-the-above approach is going to mean that there will be candidates on both economic issues and on social issues who may not agree with the party platform all the time. And we have to be comfortable with that.”

Democrats are cautiously optimistic about early returns.

While they’re still smarting over an expensive loss in an upscale open Georgia House seat and a missed opportunity to seriously contest an open seat in populist Montana, there have been signs of a shift towards Democrats, especially in more rural populist areas — like a big special election win in an Iowa statehouse seat last week that Trump had carried by 20 points.

For now, Democrats are taking an all-of-the-above approach. But if money gets tight near next year’s election, it will be telling to see which type of terrain they spend more heavily on.

“There’s been this huge bounce back in some of the battleground rural areas,” said Hagner. “Right now the answer is invest in all of them, get the best candidates you get in all of them. Next year it’ll be an interesting question of which of them are better targets.”

The biggest thing in between controversial former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore (R) and the U.S. Senate is Donald Trump.

Heading into election day on Tuesday, the question is whether the president and the GOP establishment have been able to do enough to push their favored candidate, appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL), into a runoff where they think they can defeat a man best known for his anti-gay and religious right stances.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his donor network have gone all-in for Strange, a former state attorney general and lobbyist who was appointed to the Senate after Jeff Sessions left to become attorney general.

With $4 million in negative ads attacking Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) for his earlier criticism of Trump and the president’s last-minute support in a state where he’s immensely popular with the GOP base, they’re feeling confident that they’ve put their man into the top two in the race ahead of a likely runoff on Sept. 28.

But public and private polling indicates Moore is likely to finish in first place in Tuesday’s election. If Strange does manage to edge Brooks on Tuesday — a likelihood but no guarantee, as some polls show a tight race between them — his allies are ready to spend at least as much for him in what they expect to be a competitive runoff.

“I’m not inclined to believe Moore can’t win this race,” said Ford O’Connell, a national GOP strategist who did some work on Strange’s 2010 race for attorney general. “A lot of folks in Alabama are looking for someone who’s a lot more fiery. They’re looking beyond the usual business conservative wing, they’re looking for ideologues who represent them.”

Strategists involved in the race say Trump has been a huge boon to Strange as he looks to push past Brooks in the first round. The president tweeted his support last week, did so again on Monday, and according to Strange allies he recorded a last-minute robocall ahead of the primary.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/897044700124909569

Moore has built a base of ardent evangelical Christian support in his two decades of attacking gay people and refusing to follow other court rulings. Strange allies think Moore has a hard ceiling of support, as evidenced by his poor showing in a pair of past gubernatorial runs. But they’re not taking any chances: The Senate Leadership Fund, the super-PAC aligned with McConnell, has already begun airing ads tearing apart Moore for taking a $1 million salary from the Christian non-profit he runs.

“Our goal has always been to make the runoff. We’ve been playing for second place all along, to get Luther Strange into the runoff and take it from there,” said Senate Leadership Fund spokesman Chris Pack.

Trump’s endorsement is huge, as his favorable numbers remain in the 80s among Alabama Republican primary voters.

“The fact that the president endorsed him I think is a huge game-changer. Going into this election tomorrow the whole goal was to get into the runoff with Roy Moore, he has this solid base of support,” Perry Hooper Jr., a Strange backer who was the Alabama chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign, told TPM.

Moore, a former judge, is best known for his pair of high-profile stances against “activist judges” — both of which cost him his own robes.

In 2003, he was removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court after installing, then refusing to remove, a two-and-a-half-ton monument to the Ten Commandments outside his courthouse. After a pair of disappointing runs for governor, he won back his state Supreme Court seat in 2012 over a recently appointed judge.

He was soon suspended from court once again after ordering state judges to disobey the U.S. Supreme Court and refuse to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“Is there such a thing as morality anymore?” Moore said at the time. “Sodomy for centuries was declared to be against the laws of nature and nature’s God. And now if you say that in public, and I guess I am, am I violating somebody’s civil rights? Have we elevated morality to immorality? Do we call good, bad?”

In between, he said Congress should bar Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) from office because he’s a Muslim, and declared that when the Founding Fathers talked about God-given rights of “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” they were talking about a Christian God. “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures,” he said.

He’s hardly softened his tone in this race. In a recent op-ed, he pledged to stop “Obama-era policies of using our troops as social experiments and keep them focused on what they do best” and called liberal judges “the single largest threat to our country’s existence.”

In an interview just last week, he defended Russian strongman Vladimir Putin while criticizing the U.S. for allowing same-sex marriage.

Republicans quietly say that if Moore wins the nomination it might actually put the seat in jeopardy, though they’re skeptical any Republican could lose statewide in Alabama. A Moore win, however, might not be any more pleasant for McConnell over the next few years.

Strange is no moderate squish himself. As state attorney general, he was involved in many lawsuits against the federal government, including a push to overturn federal rules protecting transgender students in the classroom and battles against Obama-era EPA standards. But Republicans acknowledge his ties to McConnell aren’t helpful — nor are his longstanding connections to the country club wing of the Alabama GOP, including disgraced former Gov. Robert Bentley (R), who appointed him to the seat shortly before resigning.

And it’s no guarantee that the voters who back Brooks in the first round will gravitate towards Strange over Moore. Many supporters of Brooks, a hardline fiscal conservative, are just as anti-establishment as Moore’s. And it remains to be seen whether Brooks’ high-profile right-wing pundit backers including Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham decide to fall in line or back Trump’s pick in the second round.

“I think it doesn’t matter if Roy Moore gets caught shooting someone tomorrow, he’s still going to get that base support of 30 to 35 percent. I’m not sure where the Mo Brooks supporters will go,” said Hooper. “But I do think Donald Trump is a major part of this.”

Democrats have landed their top recruit to challenge Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), according to a local report, with Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) planning to jump into the race in the coming weeks.

Phoenix’s NBC affiliate reports that Sinema, a centrist congresswoman who Democrats have been courting for a statewide run for years, will indeed take the plunge against Flake, one of the two incumbent Republicans that Democrats think they can beat this election cycle besides Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV).

Sinema is doing little to push back on that report.

“I’ve heard from many Arizonans encouraging me to run for the United States Senate. It is something I am seriously considering. When I make any decisions, Arizonans will be the first to know,” she said in a Friday statement.

Sinema has an interesting background. She’s the first openly bisexual member of Congress in history, and in the Arizona statehouse was known as a fiery liberal. But she’s shifted to the center in recent years, joining the moderate Blue Dog coalition, and is one of only a handful of Democrats who the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed in recent years.

She has managed to lock down a Democratic-trending suburban Phoenix, winning the once-competitive seat in 2012 and holding off a tough challenge in the 2014 GOP wave before cruising in 2016. The district was drawn to be a tossup, and President Obama would have won it by just 4 percentage points in 2008, but it’s trended strongly Democratic and President Trump lost it by almost 15 points last fall.

That trend has helped move the state from a GOP lock towards competitiveness — Trump carried Arizona by less than 4 points. And Flake faces the double-whammy of a potentially tough primary campaign where he’ll face a pro-Trump candidate before a general election that’s shaping up to be a real challenge.

Flake may not have made things easier on himself by penning a book and op-ed excoriating Trump, a move that has infuriated the president and added fuel to the fire of the primary challenge against him. Former state Sen. Kelli Ward (R), who was crushed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in a primary challenge last cycle, is already in the race against him, but Trump allies are working to recruit one of a pair of much more serious allies to challenge him as well, and the president himself is threatening to get involved.

Republicans have privately said for months that Flake faces a tough path to reelection, and private polling indicates that he has a tightrope to walk if he wants to return to office after 2018.